Frost
by shooting-stetsons
Summary: As a last tribute to recently-passed Amy Pond, the girl who waited, the now-aged Doctor visits Seattle, and returns to the TARDIS with something a bit more valuable than a souvenir.
1. Chapter 1

In all 930 years of traveling across time and space, the Doctor still couldn't believe that he had never been to Seattle, Washington. He had seen London more times than he could count, endless species and planets constantly whirring past the TARDIS doors, had even dabbled around the White House, California, Florida, Utah and Area 51, and yet never had he seen the rainy city of Seattle, rumored to be so much like London.

Amy had always wanted to see the space needle. Rory, too.

Nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary had happened to the Ponds, or the Williamses, or whoever they had been, for even they had been puzzled about it until the very end. They had been happy, and they'd had children when the time was right, and grandchildren. He returned when Rory died, and again five years later when Amy followed him. Their youngest granddaughter, 14-year-old Amelia, had cried on his shoulder for hours and begged him for first-account stories of the Mad Man with the Box, stories that she and her father and her siblings and her aunts and uncles had all grown up to. The Doctor told them all he could remember in the old tired body that had served him well for over fifty years – the first one he hadn't had destroyed by monsters so far – and they laughed together.

When Gloria, Amy and Rory's daughter, began sorting through her parents' things at long last (Amy had refused to let anyone touch Rory's things with such a vivacity that she even resorted to biting at one point, which had then landed her in the old folks' home), she found the dolls, the puppets, the drawings of young Amelia Pond's Raggedy Doctor, the cardboard cut-outs, ceramic pots, and Chinese paper folded in the shape of his magical blue box. They gave them to the old Doctor, and he made sure to stow them in a place of honor in the console room of the TARDIS as he prepared to leave.

"Can't I come with you?"

Running a hand through his lightly-graying hair, the Doctor turned and smiled at the weepy young girl in the drive. Young Amelia looked so very much like his Amy, with her bright ginger hair (_brighter than sunflowers,_ he thought vaguely) and stand-offish attitude. Her long hair was falling down over her shaking shoulders as she stood along in the drive and cried, watching him ascend the single step up into the TARDIS.

"I'm an old man now, Amelia," he told her sadly, but with the same spark of life present in his eyes that had been there since the day a younger-looking man had thrown a grappling hook out from the open doors of the TARDIS and made a little Scottish girl smile despite her fear of the crack in her wall. "It wouldn't be right for you to come with me. I've been alone for a long time, and it would be strange for me to start over again with someone not even out of school yet."

"I don't care about school!" wailed Amelia, taking a few steps closer to him. "I want to see the universe like Gran did!"

Without a moment's thought, the Doctor closed the gap between himself and the girl, wrapping his arms so tightly around her that she didn't even shake when she cried into his neck. "Oh, my sweet Amelia Pond," he whispered to her as he stroked her orange curls. "You dear, dear child. I loved your Gran and your Gramps with all my two hearts, but I have to move on now, do you understand?" She sniffled and nodded against his tweed jacket, one hand absently fiddling with the bow-tie that he had been wearing all her life. She pulled back and wiped her eyes roughly, trying to find a smile while the Doctor dug his hands into his pockets.

"It's not goodbye forever, Amelia," he promised. "I might have a new face the next time you see me, but I'll still be me, checking in on things here on Earth. Until then…"

Amelia could have sworn all the money in her piggy bank that at that very moment the eyes of the most feared and respected being in all the cosmos, turned up to look into the bedroom window that had once belonged to her Gran as a little girl from a fairy tale, were sparkling with tears as he whispered words he never thought he'd have to really _mean_.

"Bye-bye, Pond."

He stepped back into the ancient-and-brand-new blue box, waving at the people clustered in the front door and the girl in the drive before closing the TARDIS doors and flying off to his next great adventure, staring somberly at the little paper dolls of The Girl Who Waited taped to the steering console.

Seattle sounded good. He could laugh at the space needle and feel the rain on his face.

Geronimo.


	2. Chapter 2

The jump from Leadworth to Seattle was nothing like that of the jump from Earth to Proxima Centauri; it was even smaller than his skip to the moon that should have taken five minutes when Amy Pond was 20 years old, and the Doctor didn't even have time to sit down before he was landing the TARDIS in a vacant parking space in a metered lot. He was sure to turn on the perception filters before locking her up.

The Doctor didn't quite know what to do with himself once he arrived in the massive city, but he had not worried about those sorts of things for ages and merely entertained himself with walking through the public market, watching the tourists click away with their cameras while he simply absorbed everything around him. He never collected artifacts from his travels, choosing instead to hold all souvenirs he needed in memory.

The afternoon passed uneventfully, but not dully. The Doctor's body was old, and a nice walk (opposed to the constant running he still did quite often) was very enjoyable in a drizzly city like this.

However, as it always seems to, trouble called out to him.

The girl was crying, that was the first thing that he noticed. It was always the first thing he noticed in new places, crying children. Or, in this particular case, a crying teenager. She was older than Amelia, judging by her facial features, but small and dirty and thin and, of course, crying, hands tangled in her untidy brown hair.

"Now then, what's this?" he said absently, moving closer to kneel before the girl huddled against the brick wall. "What's wrong?"

The girl looked warily up at the Doctor through red-rimmed eyes, pressing herself more firmly into the brick wall behind her. Though she visibly responded to his presence by looking over his professorly attire, her mouth did not move.

"Come along, then, I'm the Doctor, I'm here to help," he urged her with encouraging nods of his head. "Has something frightened you? Hurt you? Upset you in any way?"

She seemed confused by his barrage of questions, and just when the Doctor was beginning to think that she didn't speak English and that the TARDIS' communicator had suddenly sparked out, she finally spoke.

"They are coming for me," she whispered, lunging forward and grasping his arm in her bony hand, lips cracked and bleeding. "They're coming!"

She looked frantically around them with her free hand clapped suddenly over her mouth as if she had uttered a horrible curse word, whimpering in fear and clinging to the Doctor's jacket.

The Doctor looked down the alley in the same direction the girl was looking. "What? What's coming? Who is coming?"

It was only until after he spoke that he realized the noisy mess of the market had vanished as quickly as it took a cold wind to blow across a field of wheat. He looked down the other way and saw a man in a black suit standing at the alley's opening. _Watching_ _us..._

"What's your name?" asked the Doctor quietly, not looking away from the man who had no visible face.

The girl looked at him as though he were crazy. He didn't have to see her to know that, everyone thought he was crazy when he chose to introduce himself at times like this. "Klara," she said. "Klara Frost."

"Alright, Klara Frost," said the Doctor distractedly, pulling the sonic screwdriver from his pocket. "For the next hour or so, I'm going to need you to do everything I say, whether that be to hide, jump into the gutter, surrender, leave me to die, or run. Understand?"

Klara looked as though he had grown a second head, but nodded. "Yes."

"Good, good," replied the Doctor, faster than before now that the faceless man was moving toward them and growing taller at an alarming rate. "Now is one of those times. Run!"

He snatched the girl's hand up in his and practically yanked her to her feet, launching them both down the opposite end of the alley, as far from the growing faceless man as possible.


	3. Chapter 3

"How did you know it was coming?" questioned the Doctor as they went round turn after turn through the twisting alleyways. "How did you know he was at the end of the alley?"

"They've been following me!" cried Klára as they paused for breath in the marketplace, hiding themselves among the crowds momentarily. "They…they target you and stalk you until they can snatch you up and do god knows what to you. They've been after me for weeks. They tore my cat apart, almost like a warning…"

The Doctor didn't realize he was staring at Klára until she nudged his arm with her fist. She pulled a few American coins from her holey pocket and handed them to vendor for two chocolate biscuits, one of which she gave to him.

"Why do you keep saying 'they'?" he asked, thinking about many things very quickly as he took a large bite out of his biscuit. "There's more than one?"

"Where have you been?" retorted Klára, not sounding entirely angry, but definitely frustrated. "People have been disappearing by the dozens for weeks. There _have_ to be more than one of them."

"Not necessarily," retorted the Doctor as he scanned the busy street for signs of the creature again. Sitting them down at the first open table he saw and pulling out his screwdriver under its surface, he did a quick scan of the street, the table, and, discreetly, Klára. She was positively buzzing with the energy those things were letting off; it was embedded in the dirt beneath her fingernails, shining out of her gray eyes, tangled in her stringy hair… "But what _was_ that thing? Never seen one before; now that's an anomaly…" he muttered to himself as Klára Frost watched him.

Tilting her head curiously to the side, she asked, "Who are you, some sort of investigator? What's that noise?"

He quickly took his thumb off the switch on the screwdriver. "I'm just jiggling my leg; the table's squeaking."

"Right. So who _are_ you?"

"Well, I'm the Doctor."

Klára's mouth pinched slightly, and her brows furrowed together, and for one shining moment some strange combination of Amy Pond and Donna Noble was staring back at him from across the little table, seriously doubting his sanity as they had almost every day. "Yeah, I get that," she said uncertainly. "But Doctor who?"

The Doctor couldn't help grinning and clapping his hands together amusedly, putting his screwdriver down on top of the table in a moment's lapse of judgment, and just that quickly Klára had snatched it up. "What's this? Are you some sort of scientist, then?"

"Well I—"

"Because I have heard that scientists are beginning to develop compact tools like this," continued Klára as though he hadn't spoken. "Or is this just a flashy pen? I dunno…" She accidentally hit the switch to operate the screwdriver, heard the sonic noise, jumped, and dropped it onto the ground where it promptly broke into three pieces.

"Ah, now look what you've done!" snapped The Doctor in alarm, dropping to the concrete to pick up the remains of his faithful screwdriver.

Klára shrank back in her chair faster than most people had the ability to shrink and gnawed on her lower lip with tears sparkling in her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said tightly, pale face flushing dark red. "I didn't mean to, it shook when it buzzed and I just…I just dropped it, I'm sorry."

Scooping up the bits of metal and folding them into his handkerchief, the Doctor hardly heard the girl's apology until he felt something wet on the back of his neck, looked up, and saw that she was covering her face. Tucking the salvaged waste into his pocket, he straightened up with the cracking of his vertebrae and put a hand on Klára's shoulder, feeling instantly guilty. "It's alright," he told her. "It wasn't your fault, it's an old screwdriver and it's been falling apart for ages. Now, we ought to go; it's not good to stay in one place for too long when a creature in a spiffing suit is following you."

She looked uncertain, casting the pocket containing his ruined screwdriver an anxious glance, but jumped out of her little metal chair and followed him into the lower layers of the public market. There were fewer people on the lower levels, making it easier to see if the creatures made another appearance but also more difficult for them to escape if they did.

"Where are you from, Klára Frost?" asked the Doctor, casting a glance over his tweedy shoulder every few moments.

Klára cast him a shrewd look. "What do you mean? I'm from Seattle."

"No, no, where are you from originally?" he pressed. "You've got a slight list on the end of your sentences, you pronounce words more carefully than your peers usually do, even when frightened, you use occasional European lingo, and your 'th's are a bit choppy. Where are you from?"

"Why does it matter?"

"Humor me."

Lank hair flipping about as she shook her head, Klára crossed her arms tightly over her chest when a draft blew through the long stone corridor. "I was born in the Czech Republic, moved to Ireland when I was nine, moved to Seattle when I was 13," she rattled off as though she had done the same over a thousand times.

"And why the stop in Ireland?" questioned the Doctor like it was a rapid-fire game of 20 Questions.

"I don't know," shrugged Klára feebly, rubbing her arms. "We didn't have enough to make the full jump, so we stopped to regroup, I dunno."

"And now your parents are gone and you're on your own," concluded the Doctor, pulling the tweed jacket from his shoulders and wrapping it around Klára's bare arms. She pulled it tight to her body, but her mouth was pinched again. "I'm just that good," he told her in explanation before his eyes widened and he hit himself in the forehead. "_Of course!_"

"_What?_" jumped Klára skittishly, inching away from him.

"'We stopped to regroup'," recited the Doctor loudly. "I know what they are, the things following you!" He jumped forward a few steps, spun on the spot, and grabbed Klára's arms with a grin. "They're Soloriths!" he exclaimed.

Klára beamed back triumphantly. "Great! What's a Solorith?"

"They come from one of the hottest planets in the solar system," explained the Doctor with the air of a university professor who abused some sort of illegal substance. "Their planet was never named because they can't speak; it's so hot their vocal cords and eyes were instantly destroyed at birth until finally they were just born without one generation. They live off of the solar energy of their sun, but their sun is slowly sucking in their planet because they're so close together!"

"What does that mean?" asked Klára, staring urgently up into his face. He looked over her shoulder and saw three more men in black suits at the end of the strip of shops, wearing fedora hats slung low over their nonexistent eyes.

The Doctor seized Klára's hand and got her running again in the other direction, unsure as of yet why the Soloriths were on Earth if they could be destroyed by the smallest drizzle. "It means they're using Earth as their regrouping place, until they can get closer to our sun, which might not die for billions of years! Earth is _their_ Ireland!" He laughed with his own personal triumph, which quickly faded as they rounded another turn and came face-to-face with another two of the disguised Soloriths.

They backed slowly away from the Soloriths, still grasping hands tightly; he could feel her heart racing with terror as the alien creatures began to grow taller by the second, suits becoming the cracked blackened over-layer of their mottled, fiery-yellow skin, like cooling lava after an eruption, long triple-jointed arms sprouting from their sides and reaching toward them, and he knew that he would have to be the one to get them out of this one.


	4. Chapter 4

"This way!" he shouted, ducking the tentacle-like fingers and yanking Klára into one of the little shops along the strip. They fought their way through shoppers who were panicking now that they had also seen the Soloriths and shelves and stacks of records in the old shop, kicking out a window and guiding Klára through the broken glass before climbing out after her, long unearthly arms reaching out after him and completely ignoring the screaming people in the shop.

They landed in an empty back-street that had probably been well-used in its time, but now the cobblestones were loose and uneven, making the street secondary to the bustling market streets. The Doctor pulled Klára along the back of the warehouse that had been converted into the three-story market, more Solorith arms reaching out at them from around impossible corners, snatching handfuls of Klára's hair and even ripping off his bow-tie ("Oi! Unnecessary!") before they could get out of range.

"We have to get back to the TARDIS," he panted as they sprinted up a paved hill to get to the front of the market again. "It was stupid, going down there, there's no chance of rain, of course they'll swarm there, goodness me, we'll be safer out in the open."

It took a few moments to wrestle their way through the rampaging crowds spurred on by the panic down below, but soon enough they had gotten across the street and practically slammed themselves into the closed TARDIS door.

"What's a TAR – _oh,_" gasped Klára as he unlocked the TARDIS and swung the door open for her to see. "Oh, it's…it's so…!"

"Bigger on the inside? Yes!" the Doctor filled in, guiding her into the console room and locking the door behind them. "Now, I need to fix my screwdriver, and then we can sort out the Solori—_ah!_"

Something strong, something _massive_, collided with the side of the TARDIS, rocking the ship dramatically and making the already-stunned Klára shriek with fright, grabbing onto the outer rail of the main steering platform to stay upright. The Doctor sent the ship into the vortex until he could fix his sonic, and when another great crash sent his not-as-agile-as-it-used-to-be body to the floor with Klára he dragged himself across the platform to her. "Are you okay?"

Klára nodded through the sparks flying, the Doctor's jacket swallowing her like the sea. "Yeah, I think so!" she shouted over the noise of the TARDIS' engines running. He still rode the brakes the whole way, but only because he loved the metallic whooshing noise. Within moments they had gone out of reach of the Soloriths' groping arms and the shaking and sparks had stopped.

"Alright," the Doctor cautiously said, relinquishing his protective iron-grip on Klára's hands, pulling himself back up to standing and fiddling with the pieces of his sonic while Klára got herself up. "Alright, I think we're safe for now. I've got to fix my sonic or the Soloriths won't recognize me as a threat."

"And _are_ you a threat?"

The Doctor looked sharply up at Klára. "I am the most feared being in all the cosmos, Klára," he said with a sardonic smile. "A mad old man in a box? They all think 'oh, how much trouble can he be?' And then, BAM!" He slammed his hand down on the steering console; Klára jumped, but when he grinned at her a smile bloomed.

"So you're so old you're _not_ a threat?" she asked.

The Doctor grinned. "Now, I never said that, either. My girl, I could tell you stories…"

"And will you tell me stories?" asked Klára, leaning interestedly toward him, eyes alight.

Finally turning his attention up from his screwdriver, the Doctor looked at Klára in a new light. It was becoming clearer with every moment that this girl was prime companion material. She was eager to learn, curious about the universe around her, her mind was open to all the beautiful possibilities that time travel could bring to life, she was ideal. But she was so young, _too _young to be seen traveling around time and space with an old alien like him.

"Perhaps," he said slowly, feeling the pull of mischief showing in his eyes, "if you behave properly."

Klára grinned widely at him. "I'll do whatever I can."

"Good," said the Doctor, swinging one of the many collapsible screens around, "read this to me, will you?"


	5. Chapter 5

Klára cast the Doctor an odd look, but took the screen's edges in her hands and started reading the words that were flicking their way across, obviously trying to make herself useful while he fixed the sonic. "Solorith," she read, "feed off of solar energy, hence the 'sol' in their name."

"And if there's not a strong enough source of solar energy?" asked the Doctor to both himself and Klára, typing into the typewriter keyboard with one hand while simultaneously turning little dials of his sonic with the other.

"They consume the blood and organs of other organisms for warmth," read Klára, squinting at the screen. "Rather like a high-protein diet, I suppose."

"Behavioral tendencies?"

Dark gray eyes flitted up to him for only a moment before, nose scrunched up with concentration, Klára scrolled down the screen with her hand. "It says…it says they're compassionate. But that can't be right, they tear people to pieces."

Clicking the last two pieces of his sonic screwdriver together, the Doctor calmed down slightly and sat back in the driver's seat. "Yes, Klára. They may be destructive, but they're also considerate of human feelings. They have extremely high psychic connections with their prey; they're able to look into the social wiring of their next victim's brain and take those who have limited firings."

Klára paled and looked up at him, sitting herself on the handrail around the steering platform. "So they take people who won't be missed."

"Yes," confirmed the Doctor, "people who won't be missed. The alone and the lonely. That's why, I think, they're after me, and I am very sorry for putting you through this."

"They are following you?" asked Klára with confusion. "But—"

"No time for lengthy explanations, Klára," said the Doctor briskly, jumping up and steering back to Seattle before she could ask the awkward questions of why he was a lonely old man in a box. "We've got to figure out how to get the Solorith to leave the planet before they consume every lonely human and then begin to broaden the gray areas of who they can and cannot eat."

He led the way out of the TARDIS after it landed, swinging his sonic around in all directions for signs of the Solorith, but it had started sprinkling out and there were none to be found. "Alright, first off, we need to find their ship."

"'Ship' as in _space_ship?"

"Yes, Klára. At what point was it not clear that these were aliens?" retorted the Doctor as they walked briskly up the now-abandoned street.

"Er, right. Of course. I just…a spaceship. Wow."

The Doctor grinned at her. "You were just in a spaceship, you know. The TARDIS is _my_ spaceship."

Klára gaped like a fish out of water. "_You're_ an alien?"

"You think any _human_ man can be this good-looking?" he asked, playing with his braces and waggling his eyebrows at her as she laughed. The Doctor loved making people laugh; no matter how old he was or what body he was in, the good sense of humor was always a constant.

As they walked down the street, the Doctor scanning everything for residue from what the Solorith had used for transportation, the occasional arm of tentacle-like finger would reach around a corner, get dampened by a rain drop, hiss with steam and pain and dart back into its hiding place.

"How long does it usually rain for around here?"

Klára pulled a face as she thought, looking up at the sky, and just as she opened her mouth to answer the falling droplets of water thinned and died away. She and the Doctor exchanged a dark look only moments before more suited men and women walked slowly and purposefully from out of the sheltered holes where they'd been hiding. Several of them were carrying the burnt, mangled corpses of homeless people in their long arms like a mother embracing a baby.

"Oh, God…" gasped Klára, sinking into the curve of the Doctor's side, and he subconsciously shielded her behind him, hoping against hope that he could fend them off for the time being with some dramatic speech about being the Doctor.

"Stay back," he warned her, pulling his sonic from the beast pocket of his shirt and taking aim at the Solorith. "If they attack, go back to the TARDIS, and…well…go north from there."

Nodding compliantly, Klára scuttled back against a nearby wall, crouching beside a fire hydrant.

Solorith arms reached out hopefully, but the Doctor brandished the sonic threateningly, making them cringe back. "That's right," he goaded them, suddenly aware of the hundreds of eyes watching from the safety of the windows up above. "You may not be able to see me, but you can hear me perfectly well in your minds, can't you, you big beasties? You can read the signal from my screwdriver too, the DNA stamp of all I've scanned before you and all who fell. You recognize the Daleks? Then you probably also recognize the signal of me scanning their tarnished multi-colored remains, destroyed by me with the help of only a couple of 83-year-old humans. How about the Cybermen?" he added, turning the sonic in his hand to change signals. "The Atraxi? The Carrionites? The Krillitane? The Wirrne? How about the Slitheen?"

Replacing the screwdriver in his pocket and spreading his arms wide, almost as if to welcome the Solorith into his embrace, he rose his voice to a shout so all the street could hear. "The faces may have changed, but the defender of Earth remains the same. So if you think you can waltz onto this planet and consume its people just because your readings tell you they are _inferior_, then _you'd better think again!_ I'm the Doctor, and your telepathic signals won't allow you to take me, because whether they know it or not, the universe will miss my protection!"

People above him started to whisper curiously, wondering who this aged defender was, but the Solorith pack-leader seemed only confused, tilting its head curiously and stepping forward. "_My…brothersssss…_" it whispered in a hiss of steam emanating from the enormous mouth, "_never wisssssssshed…for you…Doctssssor._"

As the other Solorith began to tilt their own heads probingly, creeping forward, Klára shouted, "Doctor! Throw me your screwdriver-thingy!"

"I'm sort of using it right now, Klára," he called in a voice of forced calm without looking away from the monsters, re-aiming the tool at them as though the ability to put up some shelves in a jiffy would scare them off.

Klára made an audibly frustrated noise. "Doctor, just _trust me!_"

The very moment the Doctor, voicing his own impatience, turned to throw the sonic back to Klára, the long spider-like arms darted out toward and past him, reaching for Klára as she deftly caught the screwdriver and pointed it at one of the spouts of the fire-hydrant. The cap shot off, followed by an icy, fat jet of water, showering not only herself and the Doctor but the Solorith leader. It was reduced to a grayish-black mound of ash within seconds, the smaller Solorith in the back scuttling away as quickly as their slow limbs would allow to escape the fate of over half of their brothers, as the citizens watching from up above cheered.

Sputtering and dripping after ducking out of the spray, the Doctor walked purposefully to Klára and gripped her upper arms in his bony old hands, her eyes widening with alarm. "_I,_" he loudly said with a jerk of the head that sent large droplets of water over the now-severely-concerned, damp girl. "_Could. Kiss you, Klára Frost._"

Klára's eyebrows shot up with surprise and she grinned. "They didn't get me!" she cried, ecstatic with her own victory as the Doctor crushed her in his arms, soaking her further as she laughed.

Releasing her and shaking water out of his ears, he then regarded the piles of saturated ash with a small hint of melancholy forming on his previously-triumphant face. "There was probably a kinder way of getting rid of them, that didn't involve killing," he said, softly and mostly to himself. "But they aren't exactly an endangered species; there are millions of Solorith tribes all across the universe. But on the other hand, they're slow and blind and probably terrified, which could, of course, make them even more vicious now, and—Oh, bloody hell, why must this body be so contradictory? Last one wanted to kill but was too good for it, and the body before that was so wishy-washy about _'everybody lives!'_ it's no wonder this one's confused.

"So…did I do a good thing or not?" asked Klára over the water still gushing from the hydrant and handing back his sonic. He aimed it at the open spout and the flow abruptly stopped. "Are you furious or pleased as punch?"

The Doctor looked down at the murky ash-water seeping down into the gutter. "I'll let you know," he said, walking purposefully across the street. "Either they'll go back to their home planet and rally the troops for war on Earth, migrate to the desert and live off of this weaker sun for as long as they can before they starve to death, or stock up on human gore and move on to their final destination."

Panic ghosted over his companion's face. "None of those sound good!" she squeaked, shivering now from the breeze combined with the cold water. "What if we got them to send some telepathic message back to their mates to not come to Earth, or find a different sun to migrate toward? Or…or what if we stopped them from sending _anything_? I think that could be message enough."

She faltered at the sight of him shaking his head. "No. No message might mean good news to the boys back home; we'd be better off if we send them running with the knowledge that Earth is officially off-limits." Now across the street, he marched into the nearest building, not concerned with the dozens of people watching him in awe. "I'd like to borrow a spray bottle full of water, please," he announced. "Two or more would be preferable, but I can manage with one."

_This is nice_, he thought to himself as people darted into their offices like startled mice to find the spray bottles for watering their plants and tossing a total of four down to him. "Thanks!" he called, ducking back out and throwing two bottles to Klára with instructions to: "Arm yourself," tucking the other two, gunslinger-style, into his belt-loops.

"Let's _weed 'em out!_" he called in a very badly-attempted Texan accent, wishing for a new Stetson while Klára laughed at him.


	6. Chapter 6

"The Solorith must really be getting desperate," said the Doctor as he and Klára walked side-by-side down the street, now in search of a Solorith rather than running from them. Their eyes scanned every open window and door for a sign of glowing yellow skin. "They shouldn't have attacked me; it's completely against their instincts."

"They weren't attacking you," huffed Klára suddenly, staring determinedly down at the sidewalk. "Haven't you noticed? They've never been reaching _for_ you."

"But they keep—" he began impatiently, but his legs suddenly stopped moving as realization hit him like a ton of bricks. "_Oh._ Oh, Klára…"

"Don't worry about it," the girl said firmly, trying to continue walking, but the Doctor took her elbow in his hand and stopped her.

"Of course I should worry, I should worry about my sanity if I didn't notice sooner," he said softly, staring into her stiffly-set face while she looked at her trainers. "You're the one they've been aiming for all this time. I'm so, so sorry, you poor child."

"I turned 18 two weeks ago, I'm not a child."

"Where are your parents, Klára?" the Doctor soldiered on with no regard for her insistence that her loneliness was nothing to worry about. "Why was no one looking after you when you were in the street crying? Why was there no one to make you wear a coat in the cold and rain?"

"They died," she snapped sharply, turning her steely eyes challengingly up to his. "We got into a fight; I ran into the road and _they_ got hit by the car trying to avoid me. It was a long time ago."

She crossed her arms so tightly together that it seemed she was trying to tie herself into knots, curling up into herself as she bowed her head back down to her trainers. The Doctor put his hands on her trembling shoulders, feeling such a sudden tenderness toward this kindred spirit that it took the breath right out of his chest. He hugged her again, though not as tightly as before. They were still wet and cold, but this helped.

When Klára next spoke her voice was so hushed the Doctor could barely make out her words, but he knew what they were regardless. "I may be alone, but I don't want to die. There's still so much I have to do with my life."

He pressed his cheek to the top of her head. "I know," he said gently. "I know, and you _won't_. I promise."

Klára pulled away from him, smiling faintly and wiping at her eyes. "Don't you dare promise that," she laughed weakly. "Maybe we should split up or something, to find them faster. What exactly should I say if I come across one?"

The Doctor sternly shook his head and pulled one arm around her. This almost felt like being with Jenny again, her eagerness and warmth. "We're staying together. Keep your bottle out."

"Right."

Klára took off walking stiffly, avoiding his eyes like the plague but not so sad as before, pulling out of his arm and bounding a few steps ahead as they rounded another turn of the twisting city; as the Doctor came round behind he heard her choked cry of, "_Doctor, don't-!"_ as the waiting Solorith's pointed tentacle-fingers burrowed straight through her chest and began to drain her blood onto the pavement.

"No," he gasped, frozen with shock. "No, _no, NO! Don't you dare!_" He pulled from his makeshift holster one of the spray guns and shot a jet of water at the monster's long arm, which blackened, died, and fell off. Hissing with pain for which the Doctor felt no sympathy, the Solorith dropped Klára's shuddering body to the concrete and fled. The Doctor slumped to his knees beside the girl and picked her up off the hard ground. "Klára? Klára, look at me, stay with me!"

Spilling more of her lifeblood by the second and struggling for even one proper breath, Klára turned her terrified, bulging eyes up to his. "_I-…I-…_"

"Shh," hushed the Doctor, cradling Klára against his chest as he recalled her woes of _I may be alone, but I don't want to die _as his hearts pounded painfully in his ears. "You're going to be alright, Klára, you're going to be _fine_." He pressed his forehead to hers and squeezed his eyes shut, remembering how he had used 10 years of his last body's lifespan to bring the dead TARDIS back from its grave.

He could not lose another one. In his timeline, Amy had died only a matter of hours ago. He'd known from the moment Klára asked "and _will_ you tell me stories?" that she would be his next companion. She had to be. And she was so young and so full of life and promise and he could not lose her too.

_Come on,_ he thought desperately, focusing all of his energy into stopping the flow of Klára's blood over his hands. His hearts shuddered and skipped out of sync as he pressed his open mouth to Klára's and released a flood of golden starlight, his regeneration energy, into her, draining years away from his life by the decade over and over again. The starlight filled her and emanated from her skin like a weaker regeneration; when the Doctor pulled away the blood was still hot and wet but the wound was gone, he was exhausted, and Klára was looking up at him and breathing raggedly.

"I'm alive?" she breathed out incredulously, feeling the spot in her chest where she'd been ripped open. She looked up at the Doctor, who was still holding her with his lips slightly parted with shock. He hadn't expected it to work. "You _kissed_ me? I'm alive and you _kissed_ me?" she gasped as though her brother had just kissed her.

The Doctor laughed and very nearly cried with the relief he felt, hugging Klára against his still very badly-fluttering chest. He had put approximately 98 years into saving her, and felt the oldest he had since his first body. He gave the right side of his chest a little thump as Klára got shakily to her feet, watching him closely. "Be grateful," he laughed weakly as Klára pulled him up, looking more worried for him than for herself despite the fact that she had been half an inch from death only moments ago. "You look even better than you did before."

"I feel better, too," grinned Klára, throwing her arms around him. "It's so weird. _You're_ looking older, though." Her smile faltered slightly as she looked from the Doctor's significantly lighter hair, more deeply-lined face, and thinner frame, to the wounded Solorith. "What do we do with it?"

Grimly picking up the spray-bottle from where he had dropped it in his haste to look after Klára, the Doctor approached the quivering Solorith with the girl on his heels. "Solorith can't live injured," he said in a low and dangerous voice that suggested he was also trying to convince himself of what he was saying. Holding his sonic screwdriver to the bottle, he squeezed the "trigger" and sent a wide heavy jet of water at the Solorith until it crumbled, hissing its final cry, into ash onto the pavement.

The Doctor threw the bottle away from him, disgusted with what he had done and yet also cruelly pleased. "It's kinder this way."


	7. Chapter 7

The Doctor had been reluctant to separate with Klára after the close shave with the rogue Solorith; Klára had been just as reluctant to separate with the Doctor, who apparently was still looking a bit unsteady after his brief bout of heart trouble and the rapid aging that had saved her life. However, they agreed to split up for fifteen minutes and if they had no luck, they would meet back at the TARDIS and go to Torchwood for help.

_Try to think of anything unusual you saw before the occupation_, the Doctor had told Klára, the instructions burning thought her mind as she fiddled idly with the nozzle of one of the spray bottles the Doctor had given her.

It was alarming, how quickly she had taken to trusting this Doctor without a surname, how blindly she had followed his orders, and even accompanied him into that little blue box (that had turned out to be much bigger n the inside than it first appeared) without even considering what could have happened to her. He was a complete mystery, that raggedy Doctor. He was like the moment in the middle of the night, when you felt like you suddenly weren't alone, but weren't frightened; he was the swaying trees in the absence of wind that made a pleasing sound; he was the last and first moment of a life, all the time moving and shaking and flitting about full of nervous energy with such an oldness behind his eyes that he had to be ancient.

Long story short, Klára trusted the Doctor, because he was not the first person to have seen her crying only an hour and a half ago and yet he was the only one who stopped. He dove headfirst into situations that could kill him in two seconds for the betterment of others. He was lonely, like her, and lonely people had to stick together or they'd be lonely forever.

But what had been different in the days before the Solorith invaded? It had been five weeks ago, she remembered that much. Little details, on the other hand, were not her forte; they slipped away from her faster that water cupped in her hands. There had been more homeless people five weeks ago, in the shelter where she lived. She didn't remember their names or faces, but the thickness of the crowds and availability of beds at night had grown much thinner after the Solorith began making their presence known.

After so many of the homeless had disappeared, the screams in the night came to a stop and stray animals stopped vanishing. However, days after that all ended the bodies were found in the forest, bloodless and boneless, swinging from the branches of trees like so many bed sheets hanging on a line. For the weeks after, policemen and politicians looking for re-election had gone on absolute crusades, preaching "justice for the invisible." It obviously wouldn't do them any good, now that the Doctor had shown up. Soon the Solorith would be gone and then _she_ would be gone too, on the TARDIS.

"Hey, watch yourself!" shouted someone from above her head. Klára snapped back to reality too quickly, the nozzle of her bottle snapping off and spilling water everywhere _but_ on the smaller Solorith coming round the corner. As she grappled for the other one tangled in her belt, a splash of water came pouring down onto the ashen monster's back, and as it began to crumble to ash Klára stepped toward it, seeing her moment.

Kneeling down so she was staring into the glowing embers of its eyeless face, knowing she had only seconds, Klára sternly said: "Call your mates. Tell them Earth officially has no vacancy."

By the time she had finished speaking, the Solorith was nothing more than a pile of ash on the pavement in front of her. She looked up at the window and felt her stomach drop at the boy who had dropped the water staring down at her. The hard lines in his face purveyed that he held no pleasure in the sight of her, and the rise of bile in her throat said the same of him.

"We're even," he said before slamming the window closed. Klára sighed and shook her head, checking her waterlogged watch before getting up to find the Doctor.


	8. Chapter 8

The Doctor had been waiting at the TARDIS for nearly three minutes, and was about to resign himself to tracking down her bloodied remains when she came trudging heavily around a corner with a broken bottle in her hands, looking less dry than she ought to, as though she'd come into contact with more water.

"Thought you were dead," he said bluntly. She flinched but said nothing, coming to lean against the side of the TARDIS beside him.

"Sorry," she finally told him, biting down on her lip. "Was side-tracked by a Solorith; got rid of him quick enough though. Are we Torchwood-bound?"

There was something wrong; the Doctor could sense that right away from the stiffness in her voice and shoulders. "Everything alright? Was it a close shave?"

Klára turned her head away, hugging herself tightly. "No, it was fine," she said in a voice of forced-calm. "I just ran into someone, that's all."

"Who?" asked the Doctor, intrigued and turning to look at her properly. He had thought she was alone, after all, and for her to run into someone that seemed to unsettle her was…well, unsettling.

Quicksilver eyes bored suddenly into his, secretive and defensive. "It was no one. Are we going to let the Solorith eat everyone in Seattle or what?"

The Doctor shook himself mentally, straightening. She was right; of course they had to leave and get Torchwood. It would be nice to see Jack again, though he wasn't entirely certain he approved of exposing Klára to the Time Agent just yet…. Within seconds he had gotten lost watching her again, holding herself so tightly as if to make up for a missing mother's comforting embrace, looking so wound up that if anything jostled her she would fly off into the cosmos and never come back.

This one would have to be watched carefully; first, he would need to ensure she didn't get scared and fly off. "Would you like to get your things, before we go? Just in case we destroy the city in the process of getting rid of the Solorith," he suggested lightly, not moving until she moved. A smile bowed her mouth slightly at the joke.

"D'you still want me?" she asked in the same light tone, but with a distinct shine in her eyes that made the Doctor look away, "I know I can be difficult, and I definitely have been more difficult than I usually am today."

Instead of answering, the Doctor smiled and replied, "Lead on, Frost."

She smiled a small smile and led him down the street, away from the market, into a run-down corner of the city, and to a sad excuse for what must have previously been a coffee shop, brick walls crumbling away and what looked like a model Japanese teacup on top above the front doors.

"This is where I live," said Klára a bit stiffly as she pushed the door open. "You can wait outside if you'd like." Naturally, the Doctor followed her in.

The smell of many poorly-washed, closely packed bodies, of sweat, dirt, and sickness, came from the open door like a tidal-wave; the Doctor tried not to cringe or sneeze, however, because of the faraway look in Klára's eyes as she charged into the shelter headfirst, picking through the nests of sad lonely people as quickly and carefully as possible. While she dug through a cardboard box under a wide window, the Doctor looked around to give her privacy. There was a reception desk almost immediately inside and to the right, with a sign-in sheet on top (the Doctor signed the sheet with their names in Gallifreyan text, just to be silly; he had to improvise with Klára's name by how it sounded since she had no real Gallifreyan name). The left wall, on the other hand, was lined with three garage doors, like in a community center, probably where food was served to the homeless people in evenings.

Once he was finished fooling around, the Doctor looked up and watched Klára carefully pick her way back to him, a patched skirt holding several small trinkets cradled to her chest and a black plastic bag with what looked like clothes inside. It was probably one of the sadder things the Doctor had seen in quite a while. Not the saddest, but it was definitely in the top 10 on his list – a human girl's most treasured things reduced to nothing more than the worth of a garbage bag.

"This is all I need," she said briskly, blinking subtly.

The Doctor didn't miss the glance out of the corner of her eye toward the window; he was good with looking out of the corners of eyes, leaning against the door and smiling in his mysterious way that he knew drove Amy mad more than once in her time. "You know," he said, "the console isn't the only room in the TARDIS. There's plenty of space if you want to bring more."

Gnawing on her already-worse-for-wear lower lip, Klára handed the Doctor her garbage bag of clothes and skipped her way back to the window where the light shone right through her, and she pulled the rest of her trinkets from the box.

"Right then," said the Doctor, clapping his hands as well as he could with a garbage bag in his hand as they left the shelter. "Torchwood, on!"

"Right…" Klára replied faintly, looking back over her shoulder at the place she had been forced to call home for three years. She walked backwards a few paces, taking in the shelter for what she desperately hoped would be the last time. She'd been lying to them about her age ever since she showed up so they wouldn't turn her in to the authorities. Despite its cramped quarters and the questionable inhabitants, she would miss the place, it's wide airy windows, the volunteers who brought her books to settle her restless mind, that silly teacup on top….

"_Right_," she repeated, suddenly breathless. "Doctor!"

The older man spun on his heels, arms flailing about in that odd baby-giraffe-just-learning-to-walk sort of way. "Yes, I'm here, what is it?"

Klára turned to face him, pointing with a trembling hand up at the teacup on top of the shelter. "That's it! That's their ship!"


	9. Chapter 9

Without waiting for the Doctor to catch her up, Klára took off running to the back of the building where the rusty fire escape was still hardly clinging against the brick wall of the shelter.

"What are you talking about?" shouted the Doctor as she jumped atop a garbage can, stretching up to grasp the escape ladder in her skinny hands and _pull_, sending it clattering to the ground, inches from taking the Doctor's nose off. "Oi, watch it!"

"The teacup on top," shouted Klára as she climbed, as if she couldn't get the words out fast enough. "It showed up before the Solorith did, but…but…oh, it's so confusing! It's like it's hardly been here, but it's _always been here_. I think they must have put it in our heads to keep us from noticing, because _it—is—new!_" She let out a groan as she hauled herself up onto the roof, tired out from the combined effort of nearly dying and the two-story climb. "Are you coming or not?"

"Give an old man a moment!" complained the Doctor as he followed her, climbing faster than she had but still tiring out just as quickly. "And perhaps a hand up, if you don't mind!"

Grinning, Klára pulled the Doctor up onto the roof. "I never did understand why an old community center would have a statue of a teacup on top, but I accepted it because I thought 'well, it's always been here'!"

The older man grinned and brushed the dust from his trousers, letting out a huff of air to appraise the strangely-immaculate teacup perched atop the crumbling building. "You're right, Klára, this is far too new to have been here as long as the building. Why would anyone bother restoring an ornament if they didn't keep the building up?" He laughed to himself, hands on his hips.

"It looks too small to fit all of them," commented Klára, peering around him to look at the spacecraft.

"That's the beauty of the Solorith, Klára, they're extremely intimate creatures. Well, when I say 'intimate', I mean 'they don't mind invading one another's personal space'. They get into the ship and collapse their bodies into burning embers, roiling lava and the like, so they all can fit inside for the journey. They land, separate, and father gore to last the rest of the way."

Klára glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. "Beauty?"

She was met with a stern look from the Doctor, who was smiling. "Everything has beauty, Klára, even bad things." They stood in silence for a few moments, drinking in the humbling the fact of their own feeble existence in the world, broken only by the Doctor clapping his hands loudly. "Right then, time to open her up! Sorry about this," he said, almost to the ship itself, "you're a lovely machine, really." Then he took his sonic screwdriver and buzzed it up and down the side of the ship until the top popped off.

With a jaunty spread of his arms, almost asking "who da man?" the Doctor reached up and pulled himself up into the top of the ship.

"Oh, this _is_ lovely," came his muffled voice from the bowels of the teacup. "Look at you, you sweet, curvy thing, you! Not quite as sexy as the TARDIS, but still admirable, I admit…. This ship is powered by psychic waves, very basic controls, but very advanced for this time in history. The interior is lined with a reflective alloy to keep the solar energy bouncing around. Now, if I just do a little buzz here, a twist there…"

Sounds of the sonic screwdriver whirring came through the thick protected walls, and with a high-pitched hissing sound the three remaining Solorith materialized all around Klára in their humanoid disguises. "Doctor," she called cautiously, sinking against the side of the ship while the Doctor continued to work. "Doctor, we've got company!"

"I know!" replied the Doctor almost gleefully, his head popping up above the rim of the teacup, grinning. "I brought them here." Surprisingly agile, he jumped down onto the roof of the shelter and straightened decisively rolled up his shirtsleeves. "Now then, we're all here, perfectly civilized organisms, and we can have a nice chat about the humans you've been consuming."

The Solorith shifted from foot-to-foot, appearing to glance at one another despite the fact that they had no eyes, merely exchanging psychic waves before turning their blind gazes onto Klára.

She cringed against the Doctor's side, expecting pain, but slowly relaxed when nothing happened. "Now then," calmly said the Doctor, subtly pushing the girl behind him as a precaution. "Let's all divert our psychic energies for the time being and communicate nicely."

Of course that had been a stupid comment; the Doctor realized when it occurred to him that the Solorith could hardly speak without their psychic connections. They really were very highly-evolved. "Right. Now. You need a new planet, don't you?"

The largest of the three Solorith, their new leader, took a step forward and tilted its head. Within seconds it had transformed, wide mouth emitting a faint steam from the moisture in the air around. "_Yesssssss_…" it whispered.

"Your planet is so hot that your bodies are turning to stone. It's dying," the Doctor continued as a helicopter whizzed by overhead, a news camera staring at them. Klára stood a bit straighter.

"_Yesssssss…_"

"So you thought it would be alright to land your ship on a Level 5 planet, in accordance to the Shadow Proclamation, and consume its inhabitants without consequence." The way the Doctor said it, as a statement and not a question, made the Solorith shift together again.

After an obvious psychic exchange between the three, the lead Solorith spoke up. "_Perhapsssssss…we were…misssstssssaken…._" The Doctor _laughed_, a cold and unrelenting thing that made the Solorith cringe and curl against one another in the same way Klára had to him. "_Pleassssssssse…have mercssssssssy…_"

"Did you show mercy?" demanded the Doctor, taking a step nearer to the positively trembling creatures.  
"Did you show this human girl – this human _child_ – mercy when you stalked her and frightened her half to death _before_ trying to kill her?"

"_Human…intelligencsssssssse…issssss inferior…tssssso ourssssssss…_" the Solorith argued weakly, as if it knew it would not win this fight, and, surely enough, the Doctor was smiling in his annoying way again.

"That makes no difference and _you know it_," he said in a low, heavy voice full of implications. "My intelligence is superior to every living creature in the universe, and yet you don't see me going about, picking them off the streets one by one, terrifying and _torturing them!_"

"_There…wassssss…no…other…way…_" hissed the Solorith, scuttling in a wide arc to get to its ship while the Doctor countered its movements.

"_There is always another way!_" shouted the Doctor back, snapping as if from nowhere, feeling the Oncoming Storm rising in himself like a tsunami, the blood and fire and rage that had been so unstoppable in the final days of the Time War, the same rage that had risen in him when the lone Solorith had killed Klára, and in that moment he easily could have destroyed them all, aiming his sonic down at the clearly-visible TARDIS in the street below.

He looked at Klára with Gallifrey burning in his eyes, and saw that she was afraid of his anger; he forced himself to breathe and calm down, but kept his screw driver trained on the TARDIS. "You have fifteen seconds," he slowly said. "You have fifteen seconds to get your ship and fly away before I use _my_ ship to cause such extreme atmospheric excitation that we'll need to go back in time and fetch a bloke named _Noah_ to get us out of it! Klára, would you be a doll and count down for me?"

"You're going to kill them when you just said there was always another way?" asked Klára anxiously. He tried to tell her with his eyes but not his mind that he had no real intention of killing the Solorith, but she either couldn't or wouldn't pick up the message.

"_Count, Klára!_" he shouted, regret instantly filling the space his fleeing bloodlust had left behind when Klára flinched.

"F-f-fifteen," she called out, white as a sheet under the blood and dirt on her face, looking as though she might cry from running and dying and now being shouted at by the only person who had stood up for her since her parents had died. "F-fourteen…thirteen…"

She gave them far more than a second between numbers, but hardly needed it for how quickly the Solorith dragged themselves into their ship, their bodies crumbling and collapsing together to fit for the journey. Within reach of "six," the lid popped back into place, and by "four," the ship had taken off into the misty gray sky.

There was a moment, no more than the beat of a Time Lord's heart, before the news reporter in the helicopter's cry of jubilation could be heard even as the helicopter's motor roared around them, landing right there on roof with them. "Mr. Doctor!" shouted the reporter, jumping from the helicopter the moment it landed, his cameraman leaping out behind him and still managing to keep them in view of the lens. "Mr. Doctor, you've done it!"

The Doctor took a small step back from the reporter, eyes wide with the recognition that the whole nation of America was staring into his aged face at that moment. "Just the Doctor, actually," he mildly said, reaching to straighten the bow-tie that had been ripped from his throat over two hours ago, and then reaching to straighten the tweed jacket that had been draped over Klára's shoulders even before that. "Looks like I'm the Raggedy Doctor all over again," he murmured, more to himself than to the reporter before smiling up at Klára. "Shall we?"

She didn't move a muscle, watching with the same cautious hurt and mistrust in her eyes that had been there when the Doctor first arrived. His display had, no doubt, frightened her, and it would take a bit of coaxing to convince her that the only way for the Solorith to believe that he would kill them was if _Klára_ believed he would.

"Klára," he said softly, so the microphone of the rather nosy reporter couldn't pick him up. "Klára, give me a moment to explain, please."

After several long moments she nodded, crouching to pick her things up again, and when she came back up the Doctor pushed her toward the camera. "This is Klára Frost, the lonely girl who saved Seattle!" he announced devilishly before pulling her away to the fire escape, rambling on all the while about his reasoning behind being so rude (and not-ginger) to her.


	10. Chapter 10

"You lied to me?" she asked, wounded. The Doctor grasped her hand and gave an apologetic smile. Sometimes it was necessary to lie to people to make things work out. "Well…can I still come along? Even though I was daft and didn't realize you were lying? Were you testing me? Is everywhere we travel going to be like this? How far does your ship go? Does it need petrol, like cars? How much money do you spend on petrol every year? Can you—?"

"One at a time!" laughed the Doctor, not in any sort of hurry to get out now that the danger had passed. In fact, he went right back down to the market and started poking around as citizens of the city began emerging from their hiding places, drawn out by the figure of the heroic girl who had been on their television screens only minutes ago on the news' continuous loop.

They reached out their hands and gently caressed the face and hands of the anxious girl who hadn't known any love at all for three years. The Doctor watched as she slowly came to life among them, smiling and shaking hands; the lonely girl, the one who wanted so badly to be accepted that she faked an American accent, just as Amelia Pond had kept her Scottish accent to stand out. The Bad Wolf, the blessed saint Martha, the temp from Chiswick, the girl who didn't make sense, the man who waited…it only made sense that the girl who didn't fit would come next in line.

But she wouldn't be next. She was surrounded on all sides by people who so suddenly adored her, who would want their sons to marry her, who could offer her any job defending the earth, could give her a real home with windows were wide and that opened and with a big blue front door, and she could have the life she wanted. The Doctor slipped away, out of the thick of it where he didn't belong; he was meant to do his duty and go on to the next adventure. Never straying, never stopping. Always, in the end, alone.

He went back to the TARDIS with his hands deep in his pockets. He could buy a new tweed jacket and bow-tie.

Klára looked fleetingly over her shoulder just as the Doctor rounded a corner, vanishing from sight, and the beaming smile slid from her face. He was leaving without her, even after saying she could still come along. _Only he didn't really say it, did he? He said 'one at a time!'_ she thought with a sinking feeling in her gut. This couldn't be true; he had promised to tell her stories if she behaved!

Without a thought she wrestled her way out of the crowd of people begging her to tell the story of how she'd saved the city once more, and ran with weary aching legs to where she and the Doctor had leaned against the TARDIS' wall.

"_Doctor! You promised!_"

The tweedy man without the tweed spun on his heel and smiled fondly, the TARDIS key dangling from his right hand. He shrugged. "You caught me. I thought you might want to stay here, where everyone loved you."

"Live a long life in a city where, in only a few weeks, I'll be forgotten again in the house they give me…" Klára considered with her hands held out like trays on a scale, "live a short life filled with adventure and running from breathtakingly scary monsters in a blue box with all the universe at my fingertips."

The second hand was heavier. Much heavier. They beamed unrestrainedly at one another, and he welcomed her onto his spaceship.

"These are cute," commented Klára lightly, looking around the console as the Doctor revved up the engines. She was gently toying with the yarn-hair of a puppet, the puppet of a little red-headed girl she had picked up from the console. "Where'd you get them? The last planet you saved?"

Trying not to be harsh, the Doctor pulled the poppet from Klára and replaced it on the console. "They belong to an old friend. I'm holding them for her." His hands lingered too long on the fiery orange yarn, perhaps, because Klára decidedly didn't ask who the friend was. He smiled faintly at the heart of the TARDIS, garnished with decorations of his past that would soon be stored away for efficiency's sake. But for now, at least, the old and new could mingle together just the way that the TARDIS was both old and new.

Everyone became nothing more than a story, and all stories must end, but the story of Klára Frost and the Mad Man in the Box was just beginning.


End file.
